Chapter 11: We Were Young
“I’m not fucking leaving.”
“You have to, Dustoff is waiting to fly.”
“Fuck you.”
Behind us the Huey blades start spinning up.
Enemy fire is coming from the North, rounds are starting to hit and working their way up the fuselage towards the pilot.
The Co-Pilot looks my way, we lock eyes, he is scared, I am scared, they are on their 2nd door gunner this month…
“He’s not waiting…”
“Fuck him.”
“Asshole, fuck you.”
…slightly the Huey starts to lift…
...the Co-Pilot wipes his cheeks under his googles…
…we lock eyes, he mouths “Good Luck” …
…I salute him…
The medic then turns and runs and just gets both feet on the runner as it takes off, the climb is slow, enemy fire suddenly erupts, the evac is slow to climbing, it’s close to weight limit with people and…
…body bags.
Six of them.
All my guys.
I stayed, me and a couple of guys, Mop and Hustler, we all counted, two, three times, the math didn’t work.
Six casualties bagged and loaded, plus us, the math, combat math, we are missing a man.
One man not accounted for.
Whether he alive, whether he dead we ain’t leaving without him.
Leave no one behind…NO ONE.
We taking heavy now, time to move.
“Let’s go.”
“The pilot died you know.”
Big man pours a shot of whiskey, “Didn’t know that Stick.”
“I wasn’t with him that day, there for the grace…”
Silence in the booth, both down a shot, a Nam-chaser…
“I was at base, we lost another door gunner, fuck, we lost a door gunner ‘bout every two weeks…”
Two more Nam-chasers.
“You didn’t find him did you.”
Big man takes another shot, stares off seeing only what he can see…
“You ok.”
Big Man still looking past the booth, the bar, looking past today. Big man stare long enough to see yesterday.
“No.”
“To what question.”
“Both.”
Nam-chaser bottle getting empty
“They got him you know.”
Silence.
“We looked and looked, took fire, returned it on those motherfuckers, those…”
Times like these impossible to look a man in the eyes.
“…VC got him, wounded him then dragged him off…”
Big man Jaw now clenched, hands in a fist silently pounding the table.
“…I’m told he never made it home, he just lost like he was never here on Earth…”
“Family.”
“I think so, in Kansas somewhere…”
Both now staring out of the booth and into a jungle.
Jungle, it follow you.
“…his mom, can’t think of her name, his mom she told me he was their only child…
…the farm one day would be his, told me crying, ‘he so young my boy, he so young, he gone please lord just let my boy come home…”
The booth is silent, then…
“…his mom she says to me…he never had a chance, never had a chance to live, he was to young to drink here, he even too young to vote, imagine that he to young to even vote against the war, the war that took my son…”
And she is sobbing, don’t blame her none, then…
“Why…why…why…my boy he never coming home he dead, he lost, they killed him, the United States they killed him…my boy my boy…”
I told her how sorry I was, she told me to go to hell then…
“…he was only 19.”
Silence in the booth.
Except for the sound of tears dropping on the table.
Yesterdays come.
The bad ones stick.
